Notes

0] Professor R. M. H. Shepherd, Department of Classics, University College, Toronto, has contributed generously to make the notes for this poem both complete and accurate. Back to Line

1] The Café des Westens, a gathering-place for artists, stood "at a cross-roads near the station in Charlottenburg called the Zoo" (Christopher Hassall, Rupert Brooke: A Biography [London: Faber and Faber, 1964]: 339; PR 6003 R4 Z67 Robarts Library). Brooke lived at the Old Vicarage, a three-storey red-brick house in Grantchester, a village about four kilometres southwest of Cambridge. Back to Line

8] the river: the Granta is a smallish tributary stream that enters the larger Camwell to the south of Grantchester, near the Shelfords: thus the river that flows north to Cambridge after passing between Grantchester and Trumpington is strictly speaking the Cam but is miscalled Granta until it enters Cambridge. Back to Line

32] Haslingfield: a village eight kilometres southwest of Cambridge. For information about the small Cambridge-vicinity villages that Brooke enumerates here, see Denis Cheason's The Cambridgeshire of Rupert Brooke: An Illustrated Guide (Waterbeach: D. Cheason, 1980; DA 670 C2C5 Robarts Library). Coton: a village four kilometres west of Cambridge. Back to Line

33] das Betreten's not verboten: entering is not forbidden (German). Back to Line

34] eithe genoimen: literally "if only I could be" (Greek; the original characters are transliterated into the Roman alphabet in this edition), an expression Brooke translates in the second half of the line as "would I were." Back to Line

51] His ghostly Lordship: Lord Byron, a Cambridge student, gave his name to "Byron's Pool," which is just outside Grantchester at the local road that crosses the Granta to Trumpington. Cf. John Lehmann, Rupert Brooke: His Life and Legend (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980): 48. Back to Line

53] Hellespont: the Dardanelles, a strait linking the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara in Turkey that Byron swam in 1809. Styx: the river over which the dead are ferried into Hades. Back to Line

54] Dan Chaucer: Geoffrey Chaucer, who set the bawdy Reeve's Tale just outside Cambridge, at its boundary with Grantchester, where a great mill stood then and where one still existedwhen Brooke wrote this poem. The term "Dan" is an honorific. Back to Line

56] Tennyson: Alfred lord Tennyson, poet laureate during much of the Victorian period. Back to Line

127] Anadyomene: Aphrodite (Roman Venus) rising from the sea as depicted by the classical painter Apelles. "Anadyomene" is a Greek participle and the full phrase is "Aphrodite Anadyomene." "APHROS" is Greek for 'foam,' and so the Greeks saw it in the name "Aphrodite" in view of her birth-myth. Back to Line

141] The Neeses, who lived at the Old Heritage, kept beehives on the property (Hassall, p. 263). Back to Line